The Domovoi: The Hut

The Domovoi, a Twine game by Kevin Snow, has been released. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be posting my art and sketches from the game. If you haven't checked it out yet, please go take a look -- it's free and short!

Concept artwork for Nikolai's hut.

This was actually one of the more straightforward illustrations. I don't even have records of alternate sketches -- I mostly referenced the peasant hut included with the original mood board. 

Concept artwork for the hut's progression. Here's where it gets a little more interesting.

In Matul Remrit, the progress of the story is marked by the roster of dwarf names which precede every season. As the fortress enters its downward spiral, the roster of the dead (which has the appearance of a carved stone tablet) begins to fracture and eventually crumble.

The establishing shot of the hut serves a similar purpose in The Domovoi. As the story progresses, the winter storm mounts and grows in ferocity. There are actually two possible outcomes here -- the storm reaches its fiercest if the player makes a certain choice near the end, or abates if the player chooses the outcome that the storyteller favors.

In terms of the artwork, I tried to show the progression through close attention to detail; as the weather worsens, snow accumulates on the foreground objects and tree limbs sag and break. Technically the sky shouldn't remain visible during this kind of blizzard, but I wanted to reflect the mood of the story in the darkening cloud formations (which eventually take on the shape of a hammer).

I altered a few things for the final -- the hut is now enclosed by additional trees, and their limbs no longer break as the snow piles up. Aside from that, little else to note. Painting these was a lot of fun, but as with the spider, it took some careful layer management to get the details right in every shot.

The Domovoi: The Spider

The Domovoi, a Twine game by Kevin Snow, has been released. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be posting my art and sketches from the game. If you haven't checked it out yet, please go take a look -- it's free and short!

Around the time that I began work on The Domovoi last summer, I was also playing through a PS2 RPG called Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land. It was a solid little dungeon crawler with a ton of neat ideas (some that actually influenced this year's Might and Magic X: Legacy), but one of the things that struck me the most was the wonderful art style. The game takes place in a ruined kingdom wracked by a recent supernatural calamity, and I thought that the visuals (particularly the hand-painted shop interiors) did a great job of capturing a quiet atmosphere of desolation and despair. There's a ghostly sort of quality to the artwork that I thought would be a good fit for The Domovoi as well.

Interesting side note: Katsuya Terada, the character designer and one of the principal artists on TotFL, is better known for the illustration work he did for The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. His Zelda artwork influenced Kevin and George Kavallines in the Kou update for Matul Remrit.

Anyway, I liked TotFL a lot and began referencing it almost as much as period works by Russian artists. I don't think I was successful in capturing a hand-painted look, but I did draw a lot of inspiration from the muted, washed-out color palette and the moody lighting. I think the influence began to show most strongly around when I started drawing the spider.

Concept artwork for the spider, which diverged a lot from the original commission notes (which simply called for spider eyes and a web in the darkness). In one of our early conversations, Kevin talked about how The Domovoi was, in a way, a critique and subversion of the way choices are usually presented in games. This immediately put me in mind of Bioware (probably the industry's biggest offender when it comes to so-called "false choices"), which led to me trying to draw the spider using one of the typical "conversation cameras" from their later games:

(Okay, technically it's a KotOR 2 screenshot -- and stolen from one of the game's best LPs no less -- but all things considered I prefer having an Obsidian example sitting here.)

The final illustration.

I'm still a little bit unsure about how well the perspective reads in the composition. The thought would be that the "camera" would be set very close to the spider (who might be on some kind of ledge), and the rest of the elements are some distance behind her. I suppose she ended up looking a little big, but luckily Kevin didn't think it was a problem.

It took me a few tries to figure out the spider. It was my intention to make her look a bit mysterious, but not sinister or threatening -- she's only trying to look out for her brood, after all. I also tried to pose her forelimbs in what I hoped could be suggestive of someone trying to make a deal.

One of the many variations of the spider illustration.

A few things to note about the spider illustration: it's one of the more reactive sequences in the story, and it incorporates a lot of scenic details from the text (for instance, you can see the "unskilled cut" in the windowsill that gave her access). I ended up drawing more variations for the different possible states than any other illustration in The Domovoi:

• The web can be small, large, or broken, depending on whether or not the domovoi permits the spider to stay.
• The spider can be in the frame or gone, also depending on the above.
• The window can be intact or shattered, depending on the progress within the story.

It was sometimes a bit challenging keeping my Photoshop layers straight here, and Kevin and I had a minor panic when we realized we were missing a few states, but overall I learned a lot from managing all of these pieces.

The Domovoi: Iconic Towel

The Domovoi, a Twine game by Kevin Snow, has been released. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be posting my art and sketches from the game. If you haven't checked it out yet, please go take a look -- it's free and short!

The red corner -- a small devotional space prepared in traditional Eastern Orthodox homes -- is an important location in the story. Like the narrator notes, it ties into themes of patriarchal power and religion, which is also emphasized by the iconic towel depicting the domovoi's master.

The Sick Man, a beautiful painting by Vasili Maximov that also happens to grace the Wikipedia page for icon corners. This was one of the primary references I used for the towel illustration, and probably also influenced my close attention to the wood grain of the walls.

Having little background on icon towels, Kevin provided me with a ton of great references. The style here is really interesting to draw.

A portrait by Abram Arkhipov, a Russian painter of the late 19th / early 20th centuries. I used this as primary reference for the domovoi's master. I also looked at some of Arkhipov's other works (particularly The Mask Shop) both to get a better sense of peasant life and to have some more visual references of period interiors.

Initial concept art for the iconic towel, including the overall composition and details of the master portrait. I wanted to use a sort of underlighting to give the towel an unsettling, isolated look (like something you'd have to examine in a Silent Hill game). I also wanted to give the master's portrait the crossed eyes that the text describes, but sadly I think it got a little lost in the final illustration.

An unused version of the final towel illustration that displays a full bust of the master. It was pretty obvious that it would be hard to distinguish the details here at the final web size, so I decided to focus on the master's face in the revision.

The final version of the towel. His eyes are slightly crossed here, which is probably a bit easier to see in the full-size image rather than the in-game size.

The towel transformed by the domovoi.

Originally I don't think we were going to include some of these variation illustrations, but after reading the first drafts, I thought they might be too fun to pass up. I specifically tried to draw some of the distortions described in the original draft, but I had a little bit of trouble hitting the mark. Kudos to Kevin, who ran with my illustration and tweaked the text in future scripts to match the picture I had drawn. (Did I mention that this was an incredible collaboration?)

My favorite details here are the creepy little faces that appear in the wall. The idea occurred to me while drawing the wood grain for the original version, so I decided to go with it and plant them in there.

The "soaring eagle" towel that the soldier displays in one of the possible endings.

Kevin told me that Lenin images like these were actually fairly common at the time -- in fact, some of them are a lot more heroically exaggerated than the one I drew here.

Though the portrait and border are a bit elaborate, I deliberately made the fringe much simpler to contrast against the master's towel.

Some of my favorite details in these pictures get a little lost up top, so I wanted to show them here. It was a lot of fun to draw these.

The perspective on the portrait is a little bit forced because I wanted it to be visible. It's probably also not a good idea to keep plants near candles... but then again, the care required here might be seen as an expression of great devotion.

The face of doom. You get this in one of the secret endings if you collect all the stars.

The Domovoi: The Samovar

The Domovoi, a Twine game by Kevin Snow, has been released. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be posting my art and sketches from the game. If you haven't checked it out yet, please go take a look -- it's free and short!

The samovar was the first illustration that I completed for The Domovoi. Since the subject was fairly straightforward, it was an ideal place to start -- a good chance to build my skills and confidence and establish the style I would follow in the rest of the illustrations.

There's no shortage of photos for 19th-century samovars online, so I started pulling as many references as I could. Above is the one that I ended up referencing the most while painting; I particularly liked the shape and the ornate handles, which seemed to fit well with the story's text.

Here are my initial concept sketches for the samovar. I produced sketches for each of the illustrations, and ended up following them pretty closely for the finals.

Kevin had originally pictured each of the illustrations as close-ups of objects or small, constrained scenes, similar to the chapter illustrations in the Harry Potter series. So for the samovar I basically drew a still life, but I still tried to give it a moody atmosphere through the lighting and color palette.

The final samovar. It's a little simplified compared to my reference (and personally I think I could have made it brighter and more reflective), but I'm happy with how some of the details turned out. My favorite part are the handles; like the domovoi, I find such excess to be beautiful.

Although I briefly considered using a more stylized, Ivan Bilibin-esque look for the finals, I didn't quite have enough confidence that I could pull it off. So I ended up going with realism, which fits in closer to my usual style. There were also plenty of realistic Russian painters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (many of whom chose subjects from the peasant classes), so I had a wealth of source material to try to emulate. That said, I still looked at Bilibin too, and a bit creeped in from time to time.

The samovar transformed into wood. I diverged from my concept art and ended up drew it in a more organic style -- knots, whorls, and brambles that looked like they had somehow grown into the shape of a samovar. Kevin really liked how it turned out, noting that it made the story even weirder... always a good thing!

I really prefer this version to the original; it was just a ton of fun to paint. Little did I realize that it would kick off a long series of detailed illustrations of wood grain, which would end up being one of the main visual motifs of the project.

Next... the iconic towel!

The Domovoi: Character Concepts

The Domovoi, a Twine game by Kevin Snow, has been released. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be posting my art and sketches from the game. If you haven't checked it out yet, please go take a look -- it's free and short!

I began work on The Domovoi with a series of character concepts. Although the titular creature only appears in a few of the final illustrations, his visual design was arguably the most important and went a long way towards setting the tone for the rest of the artwork. To get me headed in the right direction, Kevin provided me with an outline of the story and some extremely helpful background on the domovoi in traditional Slavic folklore. He also put together this wonderful mood board, which I ended up using as a reference throughout the project:

One of the interesting things about this mood board is that, among the Sendaks and Hensons, there's a fair amount of traditional domovoi illustrations as well... and the representations are quite diverse. Sometimes the domovoi is depicted as a spritely little mischief-maker, the Slavic counterpart to Western boggarts and brownies. Other times he's shown as a lumbering hulk, a sort of domesticated Sasquatch.

Kevin recommended leaning a bit towards the latter, as the domovoi needed to be able to physically confront the soldier in the story. But besides that, I was free to come up with my own interpretation.

My very first domovoi concept drawing. I still kind of like this guy -- he strikes me as a mixture of Maurice Sendak and Cory Godbey. Kevin liked it too and told me later that broad features were usually associated with the peasant class during the time period of the story.

A lighter, more cartoonish rendition that draws on some of the more sprite-like interpretations in folklore. Knowing what I know now about how the story plays out, it would have been pretty horrible putting this little guy through all of that.

This attempt was inspired by some of the more shadowy, evocative images on Kevin's mood board. Though it was fun to try out something darker, the most interesting aspect of this sketch turned out to be the pose -- it forged a clear connection between the domovoi and household objects and also placed him in a sort of defensive light. Kevin liked that as well and remarked that he looked a bit like a cornered animal in this sketch.

A series of domovoi pencil sketches. If you've played the story, then you already know that the guy in the upper left is the final design. Originally he was just the warm-up sketch for this page, but the more Kevin and I looked at this drawing, the more we both decided that we liked him best.

Looking back, I still think this was the best choice -- he simply had the right mixture of characteristics for our leading role. He was monstrous enough to convey a sense of "otherness," but there was also something expressive and vaguely sympathetic about him that made him relatable. He also had a number of iconic little details that made him stand out visually. My personal favorite is the bizarre nose covered with linear designs, which I tried hard to replicated in each of the final illustrations where it makes an appearance.

I still think this is probably my best drawing of the domovoi. Though I referenced this sketch for the final titles, he never looked quite right to me in the other versions. Oh well.

Another pencil sketch, and another domovoi in the "shadowy" vein. I briefly toyed with the idea of giving him a flaring, cloak-like beard that would drape around his shoulders and arms.

A Photoshop sketch based on the above drawing. The beard idea is illustrated a bit more clearly here, and it was also a chance to show off his glowing eyes and nose. Overall he looks a bit like an enemy from Ico.

The first of a series of pose sketches, intended to be concepts for the title screen. I'm a little fuzzy on when exactly I drew this, but it must have been sometime after we chose the the final design (although he looks a little leaner and more haggard in this drawing). I was fixated with drawing the domovoi crouching behind a chair for an inordinately long time.

More chair poses, displaying different potential moods and stances for the domovoi. He begins to bulk out in some of these drawings.

We decided early on that the image of the domovoi sitting on his master's bench would be one of the key images for the story. Here's my earliest attempt at a sketch. I still kind of like the darkness and texture of this drawing, though it's evident that I was still trying to nail down the creature's body shape and details.

A pencil sketch of the domovoi's head. He's got bushy eyebrows in this version, which I eventually dropped from the final design. I thought they added too much visual clutter (since he already had the handlebar ears poking out at the sides). I also liked the idea of keeping the top of his head completely bald, which I thought lent him a sort of vulnerable, pathetic look.

A very early (and frankly pretty bad) attempt at a domovoi painting. This is actually one of the first things that I tried to draw on the new tablet that I got last summer, so I'm definitely chalking this one up as practice.

Next time -- the samovar!

The Domovoi

Hi everyone, sorry for the long silence! The Domovoi has been released!

The Domovoi is a piece of short interactive fiction written by Kevin Snow (creator of the incredible Dwarf Fortress story Matul Remrit). I worked on the illustrations. It's free, short (one playthrough takes less than eight minutes), and you can play it right in your browser. If you get a chance, please go take a look!

Beginning to sound like a broken record here, but I really wanted to thank Kevin again for giving me this opportunity. It's really been an ideal collaboration in every respect, and I'm really proud of what we put together. Thanks also to all the people who supported us and provided feedback along the way, particularly:

• the ridiculously talented Andi McClure (for fantastic editing work and the uncanny ability to make just the perfect suggestion for improving everything)
• the also ridiculously talented George Kavallines (for assorted art tips and maybe the best bit of praise I'm probably ever going to get in my life... thank you!)
• the ever-present, ever-bearded Brian Belida (for unfailing enthusiasm and equally unfailing attentiveness to mashing the "like" button wherever he saw the Domovoi mentioned... great morale boost!)
• and the rest of fine folks at the Platformers (for playtesting, bug-testing, feedback, and a few superhuman feats of CSS and Twine wizardry that made Kevin's life a lot easier)

Also, over the next couple of weeks I'll be posting hi-res Domovoi art, concept sketches, and other assorted nonsense. Hope everyone enjoys!

(150th post!)

Kasrikeya, WIP

A quick sketch I started a few nights ago of my first character in Dark Souls.

I hate that shield. Actually I hate pretty much that whole arm.

EDIT: Some color! Why not.

Withdrawn from its Vessel

Work in progress. Just a side sketch to prove that I'm not dead while I crank out Domovoi pictures.

Understanding me in three easy steps:

• Souls weather is fall / winter
• Arcanum weather is spring / summer
• Might & Magic weather is ANYTIME AND EVERYTIME

Goggle Girl

Face practice. Referenced this photo by Trey Ratcliff.

Screwed up a bunch of measurements, then got kind of lazy. Hrmmm.

Door

Door from Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.

Had a couple of goals for this one. Wanted to learn cleaner, more efficient ways of working with my tablet, mimic another artist's painting style (Yoshitaka Amano in this case), and turn out a quick, timely sketch based on something I read recently. Succeeded in pretty much none of those!

(On that last note, I actually read three more books in between finishing Neverwhere and calling it quits on this sketch. So yup, still incredibly slow.)